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Sen. John Cornyn gave up the reins at the GOP Senate campaign arm nearly two months ago. But the Texas influence persists.

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, who took over the National Republican Senatorial Committee when Cornyn left to become Senate GOP whip – the party’s No. 2 leader – today picked three political operatives with deep Texas roots for senior posts.

The new NRSC finance director, Shelly Carson, served as finance director for former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert’s Senate race last year. Since 2009, she has owned and run a campaign fund-raising business out of Dallas. She’s led the fund-raising effort for former Sen. Jim DeMint’s 2004 campaign (the tea party godfather recently resigned to run the Heritage Foundation), and was Mitt Romney’s deputy national finance director in 2008.

Brad Dayspring, the NRSC’s new communications director, has worked as chief spokesman to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. Before that, he served as Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s communications director when Hensarling led the Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc in the House. And yet another Texas connection: for three years he served President George W. Bush as deputy director of press advance. Most recently, he’s been a senior adviser with a conservative super PAC, the YG Action Fund.

And lastly, Kevin McLaughlin – a former communications director for Cornyn’s Senate office – is joining the Moran-era NRSC as a senior adviser, helping to craft strategic messaging. He’s a veteran of a number of Senate campaigns.

Yet more evidence for my motto in Washington: always be nice to people. You n ever know where they’ll end up.

Texas Rangers president Nolan Ryan, shown at a June ballgame in Arlington, endorsed Senate hopeful David Dewhurst on Friday. Ryan said Dewhurst deserves some of the credit for the state's strong economy.

Texas Rangers president Nolan Ryan endorsed David Dewhurst for U.S. Senate on Friday.

“Texas has created more jobs than any other state in the nation and we’ve developed the best business climate in America because of leaders like David Dewhurst,” Ryan said.

Dewhurst, a third-term lieutenant governor, “is a businessman, a veteran and native Texan who understands the challenges we face as a state and as a nation,” the Hall of Fame pitcher said.

Could that “native Texan” line have been an oblique — maybe, subliminal — reference to the fact that Dewhurst's opponent in the July 31 Senate GOP runoff is Ted Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Alberta? (To Houston residents who were running an oil-drilling seismic data firm up there?)

If endorsements sway anyone, you have to say Dewhurst has had a good week: Nolan Ryan, Tom Leppert, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.

However, Cruz may have gotten more oomph out of radio talk-show host Glenn Beck's fawning comment to Cruz, who appeared on Beck's show this week:

“This race is probably the biggest sign of the tea party’s power and the freedom movement and if Texas can’t do it, nobody can do it,” Beck said. A snippet of the audio can be heard here.

“Mayor Leppert received a substantial vote, and that certainly helps the lieutenant governor,” Cornyn said this afternoon on his weekly call with Texas reporters. “It’s going to be who’s most highly motivated to vote,” he added.

Leppert ran third in the first round of the primary.

Cornyn, a member of the Senate GOP leadership in charge of the party’s Senate campaign effort, remains carefully neutral. “I’m going to have to work with whomever wins the election and I’ll be happy to do so,” he said Wednesday.

The senator's take on the state of the Dewhurst-Cruz contest: He noted that in 1998, he won the attorney general nomination in a runoff, having run second in the first round. “It’s all about who shows up and who turns out,” he said. “To state the obvious, it’s very competitive.”